seek a sexual surrogate. He stood firm: no experimentation. It would be too sad, as it had been with that scrawny thing with a pretty face. Moreover, he should rest, he must. So, he would, and that was final: abstinence as relaxation: once a week: yes! otherwise he’d explode. Now comes a description of Demetrio’s job: his workday went from seven in the morning till five in the afternoon, sometimes six, more infrequently seven. Once he’d fulfilled his obligations, he’d make his way to the lodging house of one Doña Rolanda, a frail, ultraconservative woman, where he rented her largest room. The daily routine: his return, his ennui sprinkled with drops of tolerance. Anyway, until exactly two weeks ago, automatism—what else!—during the week, for on Saturday and Sunday he indulged in what could be called “spiritual isolation,” madness, or an Easter holiday in his rented room, where he had a radio: turn it on and surrender to the sounds of romantic music and stupid news broadcasts: countless hours in full-blown reveries. All of which now struck him as loathsome. But at night …
2
The rigid hours for breakfast, lunch, and dinner were also loathsome. Key interludes, for in the dining room all sorts of subjects were raised, mostly by Rolanda, a woman who distilled bitterness. Unmarried, virgin, old, on top of a host of other afflictions. We can venture to guess what sorts of ideas made her shudder. Dark and decadent ones. Everything was fair game—the world and its inhabitants—except her far-distant God, the one to which she prayed. Imagine, then, the extent of her solitude, so evident. Abject boredom, even when praying, even when cooking … Though she never stopped talking while carrying steaming dishes to the table or fulfilling her lodgers’ petty requests. Her monologues brooked no interruptions … Breakfast was served almost at dawn, as previously stated. Within the half hour eggs appeared, but sometimes only pastries. Never after that half hour, for the lodgers, four in all, had to leave for work. Moreover, let’s figure that three left on the weekends. They returned to their villages in order to—or so they averred a hundred-odd times—enjoy the company of their wives and progeny. Not the agronomist, the obstinate bachelor, not till now. Though it seemed that his nearest of kin resided in the devil’s lodgings. And evasive: Monday-through-Friday dinners, that is, conversation, a gathering of working people who often wound up extolling the virtues of their own jobs, Demetrio being the one with the highest salary, perhaps because he was the only semiprofessional among them: oh, the grand implicit advantage. If any of the others had been in business—alas!—they would have walked right out of that house in search of a better life, but they weren’t, they were lowly wage earners, all somewhat younger than the agronomist; he, a roaring success! who earned two thousand pesos a month, so for him the pleasure of sex could be a fortuitous indulgence, but something was ruffling him: the aftertaste—how long could it go on? This notion brings us conveniently back to his bookkeeping, carried out during his Sunday-morning seclusion: Demetrio had to include the money he was saving monthly to buy a small house. A measly sum. After so many years of penny-pinching … Penny-pinching, indeed, but the investment was growing in the bank: at what percentage? He had it in a fixed-term account, so he saw his totals only once a year. A significant sum. The first time—amazing! when he saw the number, and the second—wow! It really did make sense to save in one of those munificent institutions. He got the information twice. Twice, because Demetrio had spent two years and three months working as the administrator and principal agricultural expert for a ten-thousand-hectare orchard. “Private ranch” would be the more accurate appellation, but the owner refused to call it a ranch, that little word just didn’t seem appropriate, for there were no cows, nor chickens nor goats, none of those animals that produce wealth (not even pigs). So, no. Instead: pears, apples, or whatever other ideas for planting and harvesting he had: a clownish contumacy: the agricultural, indeed! In any case, before continuing in this vein, it would do to insert this note: nowadays the subject of ranches is of only peripheral interest, because ranches have no truck with the urban or the violent (our landowner would never have dreamed of planting marijuana or poppies), so we offer this information very much as an aside, only to